THE daughter of disappeared victim Jean McConville is planning to sue Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, alleging he gave the order for her abduction, murder and secret burial.

Helen McKendry, who was just 14 when her mother was “disappeared” by an IRA unit, is set to take a civil action and pursue the republican chief through the courts.

Her proposed legal action comes after a former friend, the late IRA chief Brendan “Darkie” Hughes, turned whistleblower from the grave claiming Adams as Belfast’s IRA boss at the time gave the order to kill and “disappear” mother-of-10 Jean.

Ex-IRA chief Hughes said: “There is only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed. That man is now head of Sinn Fein. I did not give the order to murder that woman – he did.”

Hughes also claimed the West Belfast MP gave the order for the Provos to hang one of its own members in the Maze Prison in June 1973 after the 22-year-old cracked under police interrogation.

He also boasted about rigging Adams’ election campaign for the West Belfast seat in 1987 and again in the council elections of 1989 stealing a “massive” numbers of votes by using the names of dead people and babies.

The sensational allegations were made by Hughes in an explosive interview to a Boston researcher in 2001 and 2002 – given on the condition it would not be printed until after his death, which occurred in 2008.

The bombshell revelations are now part of a new book Voices From The Grave – Two Men’s War in Ireland by Ed Moloney, which also contains interviews with the late PUP leader and U V F boss David Irvine. Hughes said: “I find it difficult to come to terms [with] the fact that this man [Gerry Adams] has turned his back on everything that we ever did.

“I never carried out a major [IRA] operation without the OK or the order from Gerry. And for him to sit in his plush office in Westminster or Stormont and deny it, I mean, it’s like Hitler denying there was ever a Holocaust.”

Hughes claimed an IRA unit found an army transmitter in Ms McConville’s flat which led to her murder by the IRA.

She was buried in an unmarked grave in Co Louth which went undiscovered until 2003. But her family insists the widow was not an informer and that she was shot for going to the aid of an injured soldier.

Helen McKendry’s husband Seamus said yesterday: “Helen is actively pursuing a civil action against Gerry Adams accusing him publicly of the role he played in Jean’s death.

“That might wipe the smile off his face, it might cost him a couple of his houses.”

On the allegations in the book Mr McKendry said: “It’s nothing new. I’ve personally spoken to much more senior members of the IRA than Darkie Hughes.

“That Gerry Adams was the Belfast commander of the IRA in the early 70s is known, he can deny it to the cows come home, but everyone knows it.”

However, he rubbished Hughes’ claims the mother of 10 was killed because she was an informer.

He added: “I’ve spoken to people that move in those circles and they said that at that time the only transmitter that could have been used would have had to have been about the size of a fridge. The Divis flats were like a concrete cage, it was very difficult to transmit out of it. For Jean to hide a transm i t t e r that Helen and eight other children wouldn’t find – impossible. These kids found their Christmas presents three months before Christmas.

“Gerry Adams did sign the paper for her death. It’s about time he admits his role in it. He should hang his head in shame. At least Martin McGuinness admitted what he has done.

“Adams is only interested in protecting his own lie.

“Helen would like to see him strung out for it [the killing of her mother].

“He sat face-to-face with us around 1995 and told us he was glad he was in prison at the time of Jean’s death. That was lies – we found out he had been on the run in Dublin.

“Even his own supporters have lost respect.”

Hughes also claims his former friend was involved in covering up the death of Patrick Crawford as a suicide.

Hughes said: “He broke during interrogation and gave intelligence and information to his interrogators.

He was executed by the IRA in the prison, he was hanged.

“And the order was given by Gerry Adams.”

Hughes claimed he was part of an IRA vote-stealing scam that catapulted his then friend to power.

He said: “I was the main person in charge of personation…I had loads of dead people, babies’ names, babies who weren’t born, babies who were in the graveyard – they all voted.”

But in another damning allegation, Hughes accuses the IRA leadership of colluding with security forces to get rid of the hawks as the organisation tried to move towards peace.

He cited the IRA operation in Loughgall, Co Armagh, in May 1987, when eight members were killed by the SAS.

He said: “There’s a possibility there was collusion there. I don’t know – it may be fair, it may be unfair.”

A Sinn Fein spokesman denied the allegations saying: “Gerry Adams has consistently denied these. In the last years of his life Brendan Hughes was very ill and he publicly disagreed with the strategy being pursued by republicans.”

SITE MAP

The value of the Oral Tradition is its democracy; it doesn't give to an intellectual elite the exclusive right to shape a communal memory and the collective memory. It makes into a common wealth the story of our shared lives. It's something that we share in common – and it's like a collection plate into which we can all put something: our stories, our myths and the ease with which we are able to, in some way, cross boundaries. - Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

First Circuit Court of Appeals

May, 2013

“… we must forcefully conclude that preserving the judicial power to supervise the enforcement of subpoenas in the context of the present case, guarantees the preservation of a balance of powers… In substance, we rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States. Nothing in the text of the US-UK MLAT, or its legislative history, has been cited by the government to lead us to conclude that the courts of the United States have been divested of an inherent judicial role that is basic to our function as judges.”

“… the district court acted within its discretion in ordering their production, it abused its discretion in ordering the production of a significant number of interviews that only contain information that is in fact irrelevant to the subject matter of the subpoena.”

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